Pootie Tang (2001)

June 29, 2001

FILM REVIEW; Milking Black Pop Culture For Splendidness and Fun

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Published: June 29, 2001

A little of the sketch character Pootie Tang went a long way on HBO's now late, probably soon to be lamented ''Chris Rock Show.'' So it's surprising how much fun the character's film debut, ''Pootie Tang,'' is. The shtick built around Pootie (Lance Crouther) is a parody of the inexorable swiftness of hip-hop cool and slang that is cultural currency one week and utterly devalued the next. The sketches fixated on Pootie's patter, a dialect that is a language all its own -- words like tippi-tai for kids -- and its siren's-call effect on, well, sirens.

One of the best things Gwyneth Paltrow has done in years was her mesmerized, good-sport cameo in a Pootie sketch, when she was melted over him like butter on an English muffin. ''Pootie is and would always be too cool for words,'' notes his best friend, or ''main damie,'' and the film's narrator, Trucky (JB Smoove).

What makes ''Pootie Tang'' the motion picture enjoyable is its no-brow ambitions; it's a joke action film. It slides through enough African-American pop culture signifiers to raise laughs out of those who will appreciate the references; it revels in more cheese per square inch than a soul food diner. Pootie is drawn to leather pants and shirts and fur apparel that will billow in the breeze, so that when he strides through the world on a 45-degree angle -- the better to display his splendidness -- he always looks as if he's starring in a music video directed by Hype Williams. (The effect really kicks into high gear when Pootie records his hit single.)

And using the 1975 blaxploitation movie ''Dolemite'' as its launching point, the movie takes off. In ''Dolemite,'' which aspires to squalid (and will have you weeping with laughter), the comedian Rudy Ray Moore turned a persona gleaned from one of his famous stand-up routines into an avenging, be-Afro'ed crime fighter capable of the foulest martial arts technique this side of a playground, coupled with a weakness for the ladies and plaid bell bottoms with cuffs big enough to hide a scimitar.

''Pootie Tang'' sets things off with a highlight. The title character, a world-renowned performer and the epitome of all that is dope, is being interviewed by Bob Costas. Pootie is on Mr. Costas's show to present a clip from his action bio-pic, ''Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine.'' (For those unfamiliar with Pootie-isms, the movie flashes translations of many of the phrases on-screen. It's like a hip-hop version of ''Sesame Street.'') He happily runs down the cast: ''Trucky, Biggie Shorty, Froggy, Dirty Dee . . . and Robert Vaughn.'' In his filthy clothes and the dirtiest Edsel not parked in a landfill, the cartoon villain Dirty Dee is the Pigpen of macks, and Pootie shuts down his drug operation in a wildly funny set piece that sets its own standard, as if Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, were starring in ''The Matrix.''

From there, the film introduces the very young Pootie, clad in a rabbit fur blouson and leather pants, who even as a little boy has the power to cloud women's minds and leaves a trail of broken hearts. His father (Mr. Rock, who produced the film and appears in several roles) uses his magic belt to teach Pootie a self-invented martial art. The father passes his Zen power along to his son, who uses it on the forces of evil; the scenes of the belt working like a living thing as Pootie issues whuppings to bad guys and then leaping back into his belt loops are very funny.

The movie is incredibly sweet spirited; if the language weren't so profane -- except for Pootie, and God only knows what he's saying -- children could go for it. Pootie appeals to them because he's a sweetheart who flexes clean living slogans in his public service announcements, warning youth to stay away from fast food, cigarettes and malt liquor. Pootie is like an action-man version of Bootsy Collins, the Parliament-Funkadelic bassist and star-child hipster who always had time to reach down from his cloud to school what he called geepies: kids.

Dick Lecter (Mr. Vaughn), the shot-caller who runs a conglomerate that sells the very things the hugely popular Pootie is against, wants him out of the way. (LecterCorp's corporate symbol looks suspiciously like that of ''The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) Lecter enlists Dirty Dee, whose drug operation Pootie shut down earlier, to help stop the Tang menace. And he brings in Ireenie (Jennifer Coolidge), who works her slatternly magic against the hapless Pootie after Trucky is inveigled into revealing his pal's weakness; it's a sequence that's all the funnier for its use of the pop group Bell/Biv/Devoe's girl hating classic ''Poison.'' (All the music cues get their laughs, right down to Pootie's duet with Missy Elliott, influenced by Keith Sweat.)

''Pootie'' is sloppily staged, but half of it is very funny anyway, primarily because the writer and director, Louis C. K., who is part of Mr. Rock's television show posse along with Mr. Crouther, has enough presence of mind to get out the way of the confident performers. This modus operandi pays off, even though the movie looks as if it was transferred from digital video. Mr. Crouther's performance, which has quotation marks around it, works because he commits to it; when Pootie is down on his luck, all of his muscle definition and Terminator posture disappears. Wanda Sykes, another Rock regular who plays Biggie Shorty, grabs the movie by the lapels with her straightforward homegirl delivery: she gets more out of the phrase ''skinny wonderful man'' than any other working actress could.

And the picture allows Mr. Costas a chance to make up for his appearance in the 1998 film flop ''Baseketball.'' The film works out a comedic contrast: Tang's languidness versus Mr. Costas's wired, self-aware hyperarticulation. The current runs through the circuit boards in his head as he quickly and slickly scans his mind for exactly the right turn of phrase and cultural point of reference, while Tang takes his time and enunciates his foolishness. ''Pootie Tang'' may be raw and slovenly -- hey, it often is raw and slovenly -- but it succeeds as a laugh getter because of the spot-on satirical notes. You might say that the movie walks it like it talks it; I'm not sure what Pootie would say.

''Pootie Tang'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for its lead character's too-sexy-for-this-movie sexuality, for profanity uttered by characters other than its hero and for parody takes on drug use and violence.

POOTIE TANG

Written and directed by Louis C. K.; director of photography, Willy Kurant; edited by Doug Abel and David Lewis Smith; music by QD3; production designer, Amy Silver; produced by Cotty Chubb, Chris Rock, David Gale and Ali LeRoi; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 81 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.